Orkney 2010

[BruceB]

Will be looking to start booking near the end of the year a repeat of this years trip.
Probably late June when the best weather is usually found in the area. Anybody interested in tagging along next time?
We started booking houses and ferries early so that the cost was spread over a long time and will probably start seriously looking about Jan regarding this.

[MEJ999]

Hi Bruce,

We are interested in going to Orkney in 2010. Have been wanting to explore parts of Orkney including Scapa Flow for a while. Look forard to receiving more info.

You mentioned previously that you were planning a few trips, Small Isles, Irland and around Arran. When are you planning these trips, we are intersted, especially the Small Isles.

Regards,

Michael

[BruceB]

I said we were hoping to go to these places before the end of the summer, some of them we have done before but all will be just local days out for us rather than "organised"
They are just weather dependent and happen when and if the weather co-operates, launching points for them all are no more than a hour or two away so are really just local trips for us.
Orkney and some others take a lot more organisation and need to be booked well in advance.
Orkney in particular is also pretty much "a regular haunt" for us and the only difference is we took the RIB this year, I am back in two months diving again and we are even considering moving there if work can be arranged as I tend to have up to two or even three trips some years up there for various purposes.
We were up on the small Isles in July and will try and have a return trip before the summer ends if we get a good weekend

[MEJ999]

Hi,

Please drop me a line once you start planning Orkney 2010. mjackson@vodafone.net

Regards,

Michael

[BruceB]

Well...........the point of posting up now was to see if anyone else wanted to go and decide between everyone the details such as date, rough plan and location.
If not we will just plan what suits us and at this early stage this is fairly open to change. It will only start crystalising once we start booking if we start picking the dates etc because we are the only ones going!
At the moment the only fixed thing about the return is the date of "sometime late June"

[MEJ999]

Hi Bruce,

Do you get the ferry over to Orkney? Just read this in Orkney 2009. We would want to take the Rib accross on the sea.

Michael

[BruceB]

We got the ferry across after considering driving across the Pentland Firth.

We ended up getting the ferry for the following reasons-
Pentland Firth is a very bad area in bad weather, you may get up and not get across to orkney (or back)
The ferry cost compared to fuel costs running round to the north of mainland and back was not too far away from each other.
We wanted to (and did) take a run in the Flow and you would have to drive all the way round the island to get there and back.
It would mean organising a mooring rather than pulling the boat each night and the slips are very good so don't give any problems (and free)
Fuelling was an issue as the place is fairly remote for the main part. We refuelled at the local petrol station each trip before going back to the rented cottage.

So overall we decided to get the ferry and will do the same next year but this is only the way we would do it.